The 21st of February 1994 saw a series of votes in the House of Commons on the age of consent.
At the time the age of consent for sex between men was 21 – as it had been since the limited decriminalisation in 1967 in England and Wales. Aside from the extension of that law to Scotland in 1980 and Northern Ireland in 1982, bisexual and gay rights had stalled since, and taken a major step backward in 1988 with the introduction of Section 28.
Four proposals were to be put: lowering the age of consent to 16, in line with that for other people; lowering it to 18; lowering it to 17 but raising the age of consent for other couples to 17 at the same time; and a wrecking proposal to raise the age of consent for sex between men to 99.
The first, for equality at 16, fell by just 27 votes. The second, to lower the age of consent to 18, passed by a clear margin, in turn leading to the other two proposals being dropped.
It is rarely mentioned in coverage of that vote that the bill also made another important change in consent law – it finally legalised anal sex between men and women, which had still been illegal in the UK up until that point. This also had an age of consent of 18, leading to spurious arguments later on that the age of consent was already equalised, it just depended quite what sort of sex you wanted to have, based on the silly idea that anal intercourse is the only sexual thing two men can do together.
At the time the defeat on 16 was seen as a major blow – such a near miss. But twenty years ago after a long lull the march of progress toward LGBT equality started to move once more. Later in that parliament there would be an attempt to repeal the ban on bisexual and gay people serving in the armed forces, and within ten years the age of consent would be equalised and Section 28 repealed.
